(SPOILER WARNING!!)
I know that I'm extremely late to the party on this, but I only just saw the film the other day and I've been reading the book in the meantime, so gimme a break.
Just to give a bit more context, I had only watch "The Room" for the first time a couple of months ago, as I had only knew of the film through reviews and word of mouth. Regardless, that still doesn't change the fact that Tommy Wiseau's cinematic ego-boner is nothing short of awful, and yet is somehow amazing!
The story is as weak as any melodrama could get: it's a love triangle based solely on gratuitous and awfully shot sex scenes that feel a few decades old. The characters are all cardboard cut-outs, not once displaying any real personality outside of a basic quirk that's supposed to pass for fully defined persona. The dialogue is awful, with needless, pointless digressions and repetitions of lines we had heard a million times before. Entire scenes are simply in the film for the sake of filling running time, proving that this could only pass as a low-grade high school project. And the acting... well, I think this scene sums it up best:
To quote the Nostalgia Critic: "Not one inflection was right; not one word was said correctly; not one breath of air made me believe anything that he was saying."
And yet, either because or in spite of how awful this film is, it's fucking amazing. It's that rare spit on the face of cinema that somehow manages to leave a smile on your face as you're watching. I can't imagine a world without "The Room", or Tommy Wiseau.
With that said, however, I don't know if it's truly necessary to see "The Room" if you want to watch "The Disaster Artist". It helps give you an idea of what kind of horrible acting is to be expected, but not if you want to watch what is essentially a biography on not just Tommy, but also Greg Sestero, Tommy's best friend and the co-star of "The Room". With that said, let's actually talk about this movie.
The story is of a young Greg Sestero (played by Dave Franco), an aspiring actor who lacks confidence in what he's doing. That is until, one day that would change his life, he meets the infamous Tommy Wiseau (played by James Franco), who can't act to save his life, but isn't afraid to go all out whenever he's on stage. The two eventually form an unlikely friendship leading to them moving to Los Angeles in the hopes of becoming movie stars. But of course, walking around with a living wig that has a mumbling alien attached to it isn't going to help their cred, so after failed attempts to get into acting, they decide to just make their own movie, leading to the troubled production and creation of what would soon become the "Citizen Kane" of bad movies; The Room.
Now, part of the reason I say that it's not entirely necessary to see "The Room" to enjoy "The Disaster Artist" is because much of the film isn't really focused on just the making of Tommy's disasterpiece, but more on the construction and then deconstruction of his and Greg's friendship, which I was definitely happy to see. If the entire thing was just making fun of Tommy and what happened during the production of "The Room", there wouldn't really be much in the way of an actual story. But because it chooses instead to develop Tommy and Greg as people (despite Tommy's bizarre nature), it helps get an understanding of how troubled the production was just by seeing these two grow. What also helped was that, of course, Dave and James Franco have excellent chemistry together and fall into their roles pretty flawlessly.
What really surprised is how much I liked James Franco in this film. And that may be because, with rare exception, I never liked James as an actor. I thought he was boring in the Spider-Man movies; he was fucking annoying in "The Interview", even without the bullshit that got that film pulled from theatres; he butchered the title character of "Oz: The Great and Powerful"; he was unremarkable in "127 Hours". He has generally been off my radar when it comes to a legitimately good performance. Thankfully, this film is an exception to that. James is perfect in the role as Tommy Wiseau. His mannerisms; his appearance; even the fucking accent is pretty damn flawless. I guess it kind of makes sense. You want to portray a bad actor? Then get someone who can't act in anything else to save his life! The logic is perfect!
The film also succeeds at being funny as hell, while still being truthful enough to history to engage audiences. For instance, we all know the infamous rooftop "I did not hit her" scene from the original, as well as it's effective recreation for the trailers of "The Disaster Artist". However, it wasn't all fun and games with the production of the film. Stuff like Tommy forgetting his lines in the script that HE wrote, or insulting Juliette Danielle's (the original actress for Lisa, "The Room"'s lead woman) body during an open set sex scene, or choosing to shoot the movie with both 35mm and HD cameras at the same time. A lot of the things that Tommy reportedly did on set was disgusting behaviour, and both the film and the book acknowledges that Tommy was being an obsessive, egocentric asshole for a majority of the time both during and after the films production.
If there is one thing I may have to nitpick, it's that the reading of Tommy's character in the film alters a bit from how he's depicted in the book. In the book, it's as I said before; Tommy was being a selfish twat. In the film, however, he's more portrayed as a sympathetic outcast who was corrupted by his own desires. That's not to say it isn't a fair interpretation of the character, but when the film shows some of Tommy's worst outbursts, as well as him pretty much screwing around with Greg's own personal life and professional career (he told him not to go on the set of "Malcolm in the Middle" with Bryan fucking Cranston, for instance), then it kind becomes a mixed interpretation, where it seems that it can't decide whether if Tommy's a dick, or less of a dick.
That said, it doesn't fully detract from what was otherwise a great experience at the cinema. The acting was fantastic all around, the humour always hitting bulls-eye, the direction beautiful, and much of what happened in the film is based on what happened in the book. If you haven't seen this film yet, well I'm said to say that the film has just finished it's cinematic run, so you can't see it right now. But when the DVD comes out, you simply HAVE to see it. In the meantime, however, I also highly recommend that you read the book while you wait, as it's both an engaging read and a piss-funny look into the films production. What a story, huh?
Overall rating 9/10 (Awesome)!
Until next time, this is Callum Lewis, the Media Man. Anyway, how's your sex life?
